Tag Archives: gotcha capitalism

Did you ever notice that most of products sale price increases considerably once the manufacturer places the word “Healthy” on the label? Take a well known soup manufacturer. Just look at s specific soup type…tomatoe soup. They sell a regular brand and a “healthy” brand. The “healthy” brand sells for twice the price of the regular brand. Lets look at some specific nutritional items from the label. These items are the ones we are told that we need to control and keep to a minimum:

Regular brand vs Healthy brand

– Regular Healthy Diff %chg

Calories 90 90 0 0%

Fat 0g 1.5g +1.5g +100%

Cholesterol 0g 0g 0g 0%

Sodium 480mg 410mg -70mg -15%

Carbohydrates 20g 17g -3g -15%

Sugar 12g 10g -2g -17%

OK, let’s look at the numbers. How much healthier is the company’s “healthy” brand…really. Does reducing the sodium content by 70mg (15%) make the product “healthy”? It seems that companies play games with our minds and words. Who determined that a 15% reduction made a product healthy and justified doubling the price for it? I thought fat should be avoided and minimized? Wouldn’t the regular brand be considered healthier because it has no fat content while the “healthy” brand has 1.5g? How much difference does it make to a person on a low-salt diet to save 70mg? Could you tell the difference? You draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that majority of companies practice market trickery. They trick you to believe that you are paying more for a better product and that the higher price you are paying for added value. I don’t believe you are. If the medical field that cow manure was healthy for you and that you should use 1 pound a day, you’d see some company out their jack up the price of cow manure a thousand-fold. They’d also justify it by stating the price was a factor of supply and demand, that more people were buying it and that they wasn’t enough supply. But did you ever notice…supplies NEVER catch up with demand?

Remember, we are no longer living in a free market society as purported by The Powers To Be or even outlined in text books. We are all now unwilling participants in Gotcha Capitalism and allow corporations to trick us into buying their higher priced products.